While details of NBA legend Dennis Rodman’s recent trip to North Korea are mostly unknown and limited to quotes like “Kim Jong Un is just a kid” and “He’s a good guy” and “Please don’t hate me”, it seems that the 5-time NBA Champion still wants to put big ol’ media jerks like George Snuffleupagus in their places. As soon as Rodman wraps up this next lap dance, he’s heading back to North Korea in six months to broker peace on behalf of the United States. That is, if North Korea is still on the map by then.

But as much fun as it is to feel bad for a totally unprepared Rodman for being thrust into the political conversation like this, it’s important to remember that he’s not the first athlete to have taken a journey into the unknown. Back in 1995, the WCW and New Japan Pro Wrestling hosted “Collision in Korea” in my favorite city to pronounce, Pyongyang, and Ric Flair recalled that strange experience this week with WCNC in Charlotte.

“It’s a very volatile place. It is what it is – the people are nice, but the government, they don’t like us or the Japanese… We then got on a private North Korean jet, just [Muhammad] Ali and I. They took our passports and put me in one car and Ali in another, and I didn’t see him for two days. They were just saying how powerful they were, and they hoped that Ali and I would go back to America and tell them they’re there to be reckoned with.”

Flair, of course, went on to lose his match with Antonio Inoki, but the event allegedly holds the record for the largest attendance at a wrestling event ever, with more than 340,000 people in two days. But you also have to take into account that those numbers came from North Korea, home of Kim Jong Il’s perfect 18 score in a round of golf, and the WCW, which once let Jay Leno wrestle.

In retrospect, I’m glad that Flair came back with no problems, because I can’t even imagine the hell that Strom Thurmond would have raised if they had hurt his friend, the Nature Boy. At the very least, he would have sent in the Horsemen, and nobody f*cks with Arn Anderson.

Uh, Brandon? The *next* incarnation of the Horsemen after Ole left was with Lex Luger. Luger turned then face after he refused to let Flair win a battle royal, teamed up with Windham, and then Windham turned on Luger and joined the Horsemen.

When Barry joined the Horsemen it was the first time the group really didn’t have a weak link. Ole and Lex were obviously not in the same league as Flair, Arn and Tully but Barry was awesome. That version of the 4 Horsemen (Ric, Arn, Tully, Barry and JJ) will probably be my favorite wrestling stable forever. Plus Windham’s heel turn to join the group was fantastic.

I imagine the poor sap who paid 26,000 Won to watch Flair drop an elbow on a Mao suit.

From Flair auto-biography, via examiner.com:
“Because of the ravages of Parkinson’s disease, it was difficult to understand Muhammad Ali when he spoke. But at one function, we were sitting at a big, round table with a group of North Korean luminaries when one of the guys started rambling on about the moral superiority of North Korea, and how they could take out the United States or Japan any time they wanted. Suddenly, Ali piped up, clear as a bell, “No wonder we hate these motherf—–s.”